Rapid urbanization and climate change are reshaping and exacerbating disaster risk. Together, they have added urgency to the task of building resilience in communities and countries around the world.Climate... Show More + extremes that we could hardly imagine and cope with every 20 years are going to happen every two years in this century. This is the message of a sobering report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the dramatic climate extremes that are expected to increase around the world.Meeting on the margins of the World Bank/IMF spring meetings on April 20 to discuss the implications of the report for their work on building resilience, donors, developing countries and international organizations reaffirmed their commitment to making disaster resilience a priority in development planning. The group of leading officials also agreed that integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the development agenda is critical to building resilience in communiti Show Less -

December 9, 2011 - More than a dozen firms vied for contracts on a World Bank-financed transportation project. But that bidding competition largely turned out to be a sham. A Bank investigation revealed... Show More + evidence the contracts were steered to particular vendors in exchange for bribes, kickbacks and payments to designated losing bidders. Ultimately the case was escalated to an independent appeals body – the World Bank Group Sanctions Board. The result: seven firms and one individual were barred from World Bank contracts, two permanently – the strongest possible action.While a press release announced the debarments, virtually nothing was published then about the evidence or deliberations in the case – one of the most egregious that have come before the Sanctions Board – or in similar cases involving errant contractors. As the World Bank marks Anti-corruption Day on December 9, that’s about to change.Under new procedures promoting greater transparency and accountability, the Sanctions Boar Show Less -

Adds World Bank Climate Change Envoy Andrew Steer: "This Climate Change Knowledge Portal enables ministers, development institutions, and non-governmental organizations in developing countries to... Show More + see within minutes what’s going to happen 30 or 40 years from now, based on the best scientific modeling that exists in the world. It’s a great tool for opening up discussion on the issues."Opening Climate Data ‘Increasingly Critical’In the past, a wealth of raw data on climate has been under-used, often ending up as static PDFs or on specialists’ hard drives. The new Climate Portal aims to make it easier to access and use climate information from various sources, including the Bank’s open data catalogue."Opening climate data will encourage experts and innovators, wherever they may be, to come up with new tools for analyzing and managing the effects of climate change,” says Shaida Badiee, director of the Bank’s Development Data Group. “The combination of open data and innovative Show Less -

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization estimates agricultural productivity will need to increase by 70% to meet future needs. At the same time, water and land resources are likely to become more constrained,... Show More + and advances in agricultural productivity not as easy to achieve as during the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, Delgado says.In Africa, seen as the next likely place for a green revolution, agricultural spending had fallen to 3 or 4% of national budgets before the 2008 crisis. International aid for agricultural development also fell to about the same amount.The World Bank's $2 billion, GFRP fast-tracked emergency food security aid during the crisis – including farming inputs such as seed and fertilizer, and financial support for social safety nets. GFRP's assistance reached 44 countries worldwide and 20 in Africa.The Bank Group also has worked with countries to increase financing for agriculture from $4 billion annually to between $6.2 and $8.3 billion in 2010 to 201 Show Less -

July 9, 2009 – Regular doctor visits, sonograms and various tests constitute routine prenatal care for pregnant women in developed countries. But for Adwoa, an expectant mother in Ghana, access to such... Show More + health care is unavailable.Instead, for too many other women in sub-Saharan Africa, pregnancy often can lead to painful long-term disability or death for the woman or her children.This wide discrepancy on maternal health is the unfortunate message on the 20th anniversary of World Population Day, July 11.Reducing maternal mortality by three quarters, and achieving universal access to reproductive health services is one of the Millennium Development Goals the international community set to achieve by 2015 to improve the lives of poor people. But the world is showing the least progress on this goal, according to the latest Global Monitoring Report.“One of the best guarantees for getting countries on the faster track to less poverty and more opportunity is investing in maternal health Show Less -